


Give The Devil His Due, But He Can't Have You

by flyingfanatic



Category: Elyza Lex (Fanverse), The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, Slow Burn, lexark/clexa parallels, there will be smut eventually
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-20
Updated: 2017-03-27
Packaged: 2018-06-03 12:31:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6610792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flyingfanatic/pseuds/flyingfanatic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clexa alternate universe reincarnation. Soulmate AU with a minor in Roadtrip.</p><p>They have moments where the past life and memories shine through, but they never quite line up. They go on for the longest time looking out of another’s eyes – but not quite meeting - for the longest fucking time. Each, separately, feeling like they’re maybe going a little bit crazy. Drawn to find the answers to the dreams that haunt them.</p><p>Alicia will turn and suddenly the shotgun Elyza is cleaning will turn in to a pad and paper in her mind’s eye and she goes to say something but then Elyza looks up and that’s not Clarke looking out. </p><p>After rain the soil and plants combine in to a smell that makes Alicia grip her baseball bat just that little bit harder and for a moment, it’s a sword.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. You’re in my sight.

**Author's Note:**

> So I've finally buckled down and turned my screaming headcanons in to an actual fic. Come scream with me @flyingfanaticfics on tumblr. Also somepotato may have mentioned something about an Elyza Lex sketchbook to accompany this, so you can look forward to that too.

Alicia never thought a trip to the supermarket would ever count as adventurous. Yet, here they are, sneaking through the aisles. Daniel has their only gun, a shotgun with about a dozen shells left. Chris hefts a length of pipe with a bitter scowl, ruminating on the argument with Travis about why he should not have come.

 

Alicia gets to swing a plastic shopping basket lightly from one hand, a crumpled, scribbled list in the other. When Daniel and Chris head towards the section marked sporting goods, she wanders in to canned foods.

 

As she approaches she hears random thumps, the clang of wrapped metal falling to the ground. There’s the odd shuffling, but no words. Alicia grips the basket tightly, ready to throw it and run, should she find the worst. She rounds the corner silent on thin sneakers.

 

Instead of a walker she sees a blonde emptying the shelves in to a bag, swearing under her breath. She’s more heavily armed than Alicia’s entire group put together. As she works she’s got a shotgun slung over one shoulder. Professional-looking holsters secure a pistol at one hip and a hunting knife at the other.

 

Alicia can’t really help staring, and she’s not sure why. Maybe it’s because she seems so at home in this strange world that Alicia refuses to believe is real.

 

It must take a good minute before she realises Alicia is standing there at all, and that’s only because she speaks.

 

“You’re the one making all this noise?

 

“You’re the one sneaking up on people in supermarkets,” she retorts, continuing to stack cans in her arms. “Damn, shit, monkeys…”

 

Cans fall out of her hands and roll both ways down the aisle.

 

Alicia stops the can of beans rolling towards her with one foot, then picks it up and drops it in her basket.

 

“Oi, that’s mine!”

 

“Not any more. Anyway, I’m fairly sure there’s enough to go around.”

 

With one hand she points to the scattered cans on the floor, earning her a resentful glare before the blonde snatches them up and stuff them in to a backpack. She snaps back up when she hears footfalls approaching, and Chris’ voice calling out for Alicia.

 

“Whoops, time to go.”

 

She swings the backpack over one shoulder and jogs past Alicia.

 

“What’s your name?” Alicia calls out to her retreating back.

 

* * *

 

 

That night was the first time Alicia had the dreams.

 

Deep in the silence of the dark, high in the air above the shimmering candles of the early risers of the city, at ease in the gentle warmth of the fur draped over her shoulders, she looks up at the expanse of the sky and knows something is coming. Something that will change the delicate balance of her world.

 

The dead who talk to her are conflicted. They are not sure what is coming and how it will fall in the long fight. They are always vague but usually unite in a common goal. Now they circle, dance, snap against each other.

 

So she looks to the sky for peace.

 

To the south a faint light appears. A red line flaring thin and long like a knife slicing in to skin comes down from the highest corner of the sky. Every single one of the voices in her head clamours desperately to be heard but she pushes them aside. She needs to absorb this one moment for herself first.

 

At first the hush holds even as the light grows and extends out a long tail that fractures as strains until it fades completely, leaving a small angry point alone against the muted glow of the early morning sky that grows larger and larger as it comes closer and then it starts to roar.

 

With the roar the voices come back screaming with rage and panic and it is all she can do to stay standing as it hurtles towards her forest licking with its eagerness for destruction. It’s as bright as daylight but wrong, all wrong, it’s as warm as midday but chill with terror and the ground shakes to it’s very bones when it finally hits home.

 

The voices have silenced and there could be no better indication that this was everything they were most concerned about. Action must be taken now so she -

 

_turns_

 

\- to suddenly see the assembled faces of her concerned leaders from the slight vantage of her throne. In front of her a scout has respectfully removed his spiked mask to speak to her.

 

He speaks to her of strange people in the woods. They talk the enemy’s language, but do not wear his heavy garb. They wield his powerful weapons, but crouch in the dirt unprotected. They eat as if they are at a feast, but show no skills at hunting.

 

They are a people who make no sense, those who fell from the sky.

 

She rises to her feet, commends the scout and orders her most trusted warriors to the front.  When a new threat rises they must stand united. To her left an advisor speaks and she -

 

_turns_

 

\- to receive the news of the deaths of three hundred at the hands of the people who make no sense. Innocents, unarmed people who were hers to protect have fallen without a hand raised to protect them. Voices inside and outside her head rise and call for war, for vengeance, for blood.

 

Somehow she calms them. The ability to remain level and unattached has proved one of her greatest strengths in the past. The situation is delicate, volatile, but she is stronger than she was last time the ripple of descent laced through the vying factions.

 

There is a voice she can trust. One who is stern and respected and she knows will speak as she would. Always her voice has been the one to whom she -

 

_turns_

 

 - and is told that the warrior she had chosen to speak for her has failed. The people who made no sense proved as treacherous as her advisors said they would, attacking unprovoked at a peace accord.

 

Another warrior steps forward.

 

She does not trust him but he is gaining sway on the floor and must be appeased. A blunt instrument may be exactly what she needs if they are hurtling towards war once again.

 

In time she may have to go herself, if for no more reason than to bring back a friend. Later, in the privacy of her own room she paces, trying to make the hindering emotion drain out through her feet into the floor. At a knock on the door she -

 

_turns_

 

\- to see the same thin fingers of doom snaking across the sky, not one but many, spreading out as if they would touch the furthest corners of the sky. The voices of the dead no longer dissent. People who make no sense are falling from the sky to rip the ground to shreds under her feet.

 

There is no choice now. She must move, and move fast. She must be the sword at the front of her army. She must be a presence on the ground. She must step forward to stop her people from stumbling in to disaster.

 

She must.

 

She -

 

_turns_

 - and feels the weight of armour wrap its comforting arms around her shoulders. She stands before those who would claim to lead the sky people; she hears their words and the words of her people and begins to see the truth. There may be a way forward.

 

The men before her have grey hair at their temples but they know less about this world and the true danger they are currently facing than the youngest of her acolytes. In their ignorance they revel. There is no real power here. She must look elsewhere for the true leader of the people who make no sense.

 

Leaving them in their confusion she will lead her people out, and once again she -

 

_turns_

 

 - finding herself with a feeling of nervousness playing at the edges of her stomach no matter how hard she fights to push it back. Just as they had when the first light appeared in the sky, the voices are howling wordlessly.

 

Something is coming.

 

Now more than ever before she must be strong. She arrays her most loyal and vicious warriors around her. Every trapping of power she possesses has been carefully placed. Each detail is perfect at her order and under her watchful gaze. Through darkened eyes she watches the door of the tent, and waits.

 

* * *

 

Alicia wakes up suddenly, banging her head on the ceiling above her bunk. Cursing quietly to herself and rubbing the impact point, Alicia swings her legs off the bunk and slips to her feet. Silent except the gentle swish of the blanket she has wrapped around her shoulders she makes her way along the corridor and up on to the deck. Whoever is on duty is obviously at the other end of the boat because she is alone as she stares up at the night sky.

 

No steadily expanding lights. No red missiles. No sign, in fact, that anyone is left out there at all.

 

Alicia turns towards where she last saw land and feels a faint humming in the soles of her feet despite the mute engine. For some reason she cannot connect to her dreams, she wonders where the woman from the supermarket is. She wonders if she’s safe, if she’s found a place to hole up for the night away from walkers and worse.

 

The hum turns to an itch and she realises something.

 

Alicia really wants to see her again.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it has taken me so long to update but I've got myself a bit more sorted now, so I'm back! You can find the sketches referenced in this fic on tumblr @caffeinated-space-potato. Her stuff is really good you should check it out.

Elyza likes to keep track of things. So many bullets left in her bag, So many years since she left the foster home. So many days she had been working her way across the States.

 

Just in her own head, mind. It helped her settle in the world

 

It's difficult to choose when to start counting the days since the end of the world. There was no fine line she could see. Everybody was fighting it, denying the end, and then suddenly it all just… slipped away. Should you count from the day the army took over, or from the day the army left? Should you count from the day the CDC finally admitted there was an epidemic, or the day their radio broadcasts stopped?

 

Elyza counted from the day she killed her first walker. That was her line.

 

Before that blow, she’d drawn all the time. She had pages and pages of drawings of the living, back when there had been living left to draw.

 

Fifty days before that line she had been in New York.

 

With her back rested against a tree, she watches life move past. Most people seem to move pretty slowly. Even the twisting Frisbee players have a sense of restraint or a dampening lethargy. Every single one of them seems to be conserving their energy.

 

But the children whip past like tiny storms late to joining the hurricane. Not a single one stays still long enough to Elyza to even start an outline.

 

Until a parent gives one an ice cream. His eyes widen, his legs stop pumping, and his world becomes the treat in front of him.

 

Elyza tries to remember the last time she felt that strongly about something.

 

A bubble tries to form in her chest but she squashes it quickly, focusing on committing the face in front of her to paper, ice cream and all. The trace of her pencil jumps from child to child without pause until she looks up and sees and gangly boy standing stock still on the grass. He’s watching slack liners with a critical expression. Elyza could swear she knows that face, from the messy hair to the slightly protective way he holds his hands in front of himself.

 

She has no idea how long she watches him watching them, but eventually shout from the other side of the field pulls him away and Elyza is left staring at a page full of children’s faces and an unexpected sense of restlessness. She scribbles a quick note to herself and grabs her bag, deciding it’s probably time she moved on too. Maybe somewhere further inland. A pull to the west.

 

Wanderlust, she figures; happens from time to time.

 

//

 

Thirty-seven days before that line a Pepsi can bounces off her ankle and she looks up just in time to watch a jogger pass her, steps springing. The towers of Chicago rise imperiously around her, but Elyza’s eyes are constantly pulled back to the people. Leaning against the lee side of a door where nobody seems to notice her lets her watch the city wake.

 

Occasionally she lights on a person who catches her eye. Long hair that she draws with rapt attention until she realises it’s the wrong shade. The light lines of a toned arm are sketched all the way down to the hand, which she knows doesn’t fit. She hasn’t gone far enough.

 

Another page filled, she flips her sketchbook closed and steps off in search of coffee, and then a ride further west.

 

//

 

Twenty-two days before that line she finds herself crashing in an abandoned RV. That day she had hoped to make it across the Rockies but the roads had been oddly empty. Not the best day to pick up a cheap fifth-hand guitar, she thinks as she rubs at the welt the strap had dug in to her shoulder.

 

The night is warm but she is stubbornly swearing at a small cone of sticks leaning wonkily against each other and refusing to light. Eventually she gets a small fire going she brings the guitar up on to her lap to tune. A few familiar notes drift in to her head and Elyza strums them out, voice rising softly to meet the tune.

 

“Rock on ancient queen  
Follow those who pale  
In your shadow  
  
Rulers make bad lovers  
You better put your kingdom up for sale  
Up for sale….”

 

Her voice fades out on the last note. As her tongue touches the roof of her mouth she sees a shape in the fire. A person turning away from her, cloak flaring out with the sway of the flames. A voice, whispered in to her ear as soft as a lover’s:

 

 _Close_.

 

//

 

Fourteen days before that line she’s sitting on a patio café in los Angeles, flicking through the sketches that mark her journey across the country. The book is almost full and she flicks past faces, searching, trying to find the common ground. Some men, some children, a few animals, but mostly women. Whatever it is that’s pulling on her, it’s getting stronger.

 

A train of thought that’s almost derailed when the waitress stops at her table.

 

“What can I get you?”

 

Elyza looks up in to green eyes and an amused grin framed by loose brown hair and for a moment she just gapes. The restless feeling that has been beating against her ribcage suddenly stills for the first time since she left New York. She isn’t stunned out her reverie until the woman continues.

 

“Need a minute?”

 

No – no. I’m good. Just a coffee. And – uh- banana muffin?”

 

“Sure.”

 

The woman scribbles the order, smiles, and then turns away, Elyza’s eyes following until she gets inside. Once out of sight Elyza hurriedly tries to straighten out the wrinkles in her shirt and brush off some mud from her pants.

 

She manages a grin in reply when the waitress brings her order, and begins to surreptitiously watch her as she moves between tables.

 

From every angle she can Elyza sketches the woman, trying to figure out why she’s suddenly so different from everyone else she’d seen in the past weeks. Biting her lip slightly, the thought rises in her mind and she’s scribbled it under the sketches before she realises: _‘I should ask for her number.’_

 

The coffee goes right through her and when she comes back from the bathroom, she almost panics when she see her sketchbook has been disturbed. Instead of the spilled drinks she had been fearing, a small figure wearing the same shirt as her has been added with a note:   _‘You really should.’_

 

Across the tables she meets the waitresses eyes for a moment and, distracts herself with tidying up stray papers until the woman comes over to clear away the empty cup.

 

“Hey, I’m Elyza,” she says, offering her hand.

 

She accepts Elyza’s hand with a smile. “Ashley.”

 

The screech of cars and desperate yelling break out further down the street, pulling Elyza’s eyes away. The noise rises from an easily dismissed car alarm or argument to screams and sirens. At first in two and threes and then more people come running up the street, away from the wave of panic. Out of sight something explodes. A car comes screeching up the streets, veering wildly and sending the fleeing pedestrians diving out of its way.

 

“What the hell is happening…?” Ashley’s voice trails off as smoke rises over the cacophony.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song Elyza sings is 'Gold Dust Woman' by Fleetwood Mac. It was actually written about cocaine addiction but the lyrics are oddly romantic.


	3. All the world reduced to ash

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The apocalypse hits.

Twelve days before Elyza kills her first walker, the power goes out.

From the couch she watches Ashley thump a cupboard when the frying pan she’s just cracked two eggs into goes cold. 

Ashley flips up the back of the stove to check the fuses. All good. She glances at the microwave screen, now blank, then disappears around the corner. Elyza hears the fuse box snap open, slam shut, followed by Ashley’s steps across the hall to her neighbours’ door.

“Looks like the whole building’s out,” Ashley declares when she returns.

“Not just this one.”

She joins Elyza at the window and they stare out across the road, at blank empty windows that stretch away down the street, sinks of dark grey in the faint pink of the morning.

“Those were my last eggs as well. It’s gonna be cold cans from here on out.”

“Wait, I’ve still got my camping stove somewhere…”

Elyza drags her rucksack out from behind the couch, rummaging through it until she finds the whisper light stove she’d picked up in Chicago. Soon they’re huddled around the small fire, furniture pushed back against the wall while Ashley coaxes the frying pan back to life.

“It’s getting bad, isn’t it,” she mutters to the eggs.

“Yup.”

For a while the only sounds are the soft whooshes of the flames and the popping of the eggs. Ashley hands over one on a small plate for Elyza to poke at, pushing it across the white china for a despondent moment before she eats it.

“Thanks for uh – letting me stay here.”

“My couch is your couch,” Ashley shrugs.

“No, I mean it. Look at the shit show outside, if you hadn’t taken me in…”

She silences Elyza with a finger against her mouth. “And you think I’d want to be alone with that going on outside?”

Elyza shakes her head.

While Ashley leans over to kiss Elyza, across town Alicia presses a more gentle kiss to Matt’s cheek and buries her head against his neck. He’s scarily hot to the touch, trembling and sweating, but that doesn’t frighten Alicia as much as the look in his eyes.

It’s the look of defeat.

She doesn’t really register Madison’s quiet thank you, just the arms that are pulling her away from Matt, insistently pushing her out of his room. Over and over, Matt’s last words echo in her head.

Go. Go. Go.

She trails out of the house to the car, swearing to herself she'll be back as soon as she can. She knows her mother won’t leave it alone, won’t listen to her, not when Nic’s waiting in the car. That’s both a blessing and a curse. She knows she’ll be able to get back to Matt when her mother’s attention is distracted again, his parents will be home, they’ll get a doctor, but she doesn’t feel as hopeful as she should.

Everything just feels… thin.

//

Eleven days before Elyza kills her first walker she drifts awake curled up in bed around the warm spot Ashley had just vacated.

She goes from loose puddle to sitting bolt upright at the first scream, buried two floors below.

The second scream comes from across the corridor and sees her on her feet, diving for her clothes.

The third is Ashley.

Three soldiers have broken open the door and knocked her to the floor.

Two have hold of of Ashley. Elyza rushes in and tries to pull them off her. The other pulls her off and holds her against the wall.

“Ma’am, stop struggling. We’re not gonna harm you. We have orders to relocate you.”

“This is my house, you fucking bulldogs!” Ashley spits. “You can’t just cart us off like this.”

“Yes we can.”

Elyza feels flex cuffs tighten around her wrists. The soldiers march them downstairs, Ashley protesting all the way. They’re shoved in the back of separate troop trucks. Elyza tries to force her way back out but two helmeted men with rifles climb up immediately behind her. They sit on the end of the benches, two silent gargoyles in between her and the slowly closing tailgate. She can feel the kevlar bulk of the soldier pressed next to her as the truck rattles off down the road.

Elyza nevers sees Ashley again.

//

The helicopters that fly over that truck whirr over Alicia as Madison inches the car out of their driveway. Still in a daze, she doesn’t even make the connection between their neighbour coming home and the inexplicable sight of his wife groaning in the backyard until her mother scrambles out of the car, calling his name.

“Patrick! Patrick! Don’t touch her. That’s not your wife.”

Patrick looks at her, disbelieving, then back at the groaning, shuffling form of his wife.

“What happened Susan?”

Alicia arrives just in time to see Patrick bend to hug his wife, as she had bent to hug Matt. This time, she sees Susan’s face. She sees the salivating hunger, the jaws eager to descend on the neck of the man who loves a woman that is no longer there.

The shot seems to come from nowhere; then suddenly men in uniform are everywhere.

Her brain is working over-time, but it’s running out of explanations for how the situation isn’t what it so obviously is. It’s not okay.

In her nightmares that night she might scream at the groaning figure shuffling towards her with arms outstretched that this can’t be, that he can’t be Matt, he’s got to be okay…. but she’s in here and Matt’s out there. He’s gone.

//

Four days before Elyza kills her first walker, Alicia finds the bike. It’s surprisingly pink for it’s size, but at least it’s something to do other than eat tinned, listen to Madison and Travis argue, and endure Matt haunting her sleep.

She find Chris lying on the top of an abandoned car and begins to circle. Her one last ally in the new world is staring up into the sky, wishing he could drift away.

“Have you no respect for private property?” she asks, trying to be light.

“Is that your bike?”

“I’ll ask the questions,” she declares to his answering smirk. “I’m kinda the law in these parts.”

“Yeah, we already got people on that.”

Alicia sees the smirk disappear and Chris’ shoulders slouch as he sits up, and thickens her fake sheriff’s accent in an attempt to stave off the gloom.

“Yeah, they’re federal. This here is my jurisdiction. Everything from the fire hydrant to beside the mailbox.”

Unfortunately it’s a lost cause, and she finally pulls up her bike in front of him.

“You wanna talk about it?” 

He looks away; that would be a no.

“Hop on,” Alicia suggests.

“You gotta be kidding me.”

When Chris look back she knows she has him.

“I’m not. Come on, I wanna show you something.”

The house is beautiful, full of things neither of them could have ever had in the old world. For a while the toys and clothes distract them but still, it’s nothing but a shell. A giant sign proclaiming nothing but the yawning hole opening up in the world.

The compound Elyza finds herself in is full: bleak, small, and with the constant smell of unwashed bodies. A few days ago it was a hospital; now a twenty foot fence surrounds the outer rim of a parking lot filled with humvees. The civilians are housed in the psychiatric wing, where the soldiers can shut them in behind thick doors every night, nice and tight and safe.

Elyza meets Mark the day after she arrives. Like her, he’s alone in their prison. Unlike her, he knows how to protect himself. It takes a third of her rations, but she persuades him to teach her how to shoot.

In the secrecy of one of the uninhabited cells, Mark hands her a pistol.

“Is this loaded?”

“Yeah, the GIs just handed over extra bullets for inmate target practice, no sweat.”

Grimacing sheepishly, Elyza accepts the weapon. “So then how are you gonna teach me how to shoot?”

“Any monkey can shoot. Point and squeeze, boom. I’m gonna teach you how to handle a weapon. See this lever here? Press down and hold, and you’ll be able to slide the barrel right off.”

For the next three days Mark makes her practice with the pistol, then a rifle. Strip, clean, assemble. He has her patrol the abandoned corridors and jumps out at her, then corrects her position until he’s satisfied that the recoil won’t send her flying.

Elyza goes hungry, but finds the pangs easier to ignore each time Mark nods his approval.

//

The day Elyza kills a walker for the first time is the day the compound is overrun.

The shouts and gunfire break the day before the sun. From the low roof Chris can only just make out the faint sounds. He comes up in the early hours when he can’t sleep; he hasn’t missed many sunrises since the world went to shit. Usually the fights are closer and louder, so Chris lies back and the first failing of the LA military installations fades into the background.

Elyza had been in the meal queue when the shouting started, and there was no way she could block out the sound when the shooting begins. Food plates clatter to the floor around her and she flees with the rest. 

Outside is chaos. Elyza turns around, wild to find an escape until she sees Mark struggling with a zombie. 

The walker has him pinned on the ground. One arm is just managing to push away the eager gaping hole of its mouth; the other lies broken under him, useless fingers pointing to the pistol he’d lost, a few feet away.

“Get the gun!” He screams at her and she scrambles forward, shaking as she stands up and takes aim at the zombie’s head.

Elyza shoots. 

It’s the first time she’s actually fired a bullet and the recoil sends the first one whistling off harmlessly into the sky. Elyza wraps both hands around the pistol the way Mark had shown her, holds in a breath, and fires again. This time the walker falls back. Mark turns to her, a gaping bite in the far side of his face. He screams at Elyza to run.

Elyza runs.

//

That night, Travis tells them they’re leaving. He packs her and Chris in the car and tells them they’re going to get their people, to get ‘Liza and Nick, and then he leaves them in the parking lot. Alicia’s the one who can actually drive but it’s Chris he talks to, as if she’s helpless. Useless.

At least she’s used to it. At least when the soldiers come she can stand to hand over the keys, as pathetic as it makes her feel to surrender so readily. Chris doesn’t let go so easy, and it winds him up unconscious on the floor.

The soldiers take the SUV anyway, and she rides in the back of the truck to Strand’s house.

//

Afterwards, Elyza stops counting days. For a while she counts houses as she passes them. One day she counts white. The whole day. The next day she counts brick houses. Yellow houses, houses with red roofs. She’s looking for houses with people in them, but that count stays resolutely at zero.

She’s counting houses with pools when she comes across the dying man, covered in bite marks and gaping soundlessly at her.

This death is fast. A knife to the throat is a much kinder death than watching your future narrow to the moment you turn, but the two immediately fuse in her head. Elyza begins to wonder to herself if she’s doomed to watch everyone die.

Then she looks around.

There’s garbage on the road, occasionally drifting with the wind, but it’s somehow different from the same sight a week ago. No one is coming to clean any of it, ever. The plastic bags and paper cups will roll on, over cracking tarmac and sprouting suburban lawns and no one will care.

A solitary walker wavers at the end of the street, too far to notice Elyza’s silent figure.

She’s been fooling herself. She’s on her own. There’s nobody left but the dead.

So the dead are who she starts to draw.

She fills her notebook with ripped clothes and dangling limbs. Stolen pencils trace slack jaws and dead eyes. The pages are filled with walkers rotting on their feet. Crowds of them, mindlessly bumping together. When she draws she switches off, lets herself just drift away from the horror of it all. Often, she doesn’t even look at what she’s created before flipping to the next page.

That’s probably why she doesn’t realise she’s drawing the supermarket girl from the day before until the subject in question appears over the ridge of the hill, followed by two men. Stunned, she doesn’t even think to close her sketchbook until the group is almost on top of her.

“You came back,” Elyza murmurs in disbelief.

“Yeah, well, I never got your name.”

“Elyza. And you are?”

“Alicia. Alicia Clark.”

She snaps the last consonant in a way that makes Elyza drop her pencil.


	4. After the Storm

A boat. A group. Supplies. A plan. Objectively, it was the smart decision to go with them. Out here, wandering on her own, she was far too vulnerable. Still, she knew that wasn’t the real reason she willingly agreed to go back with them.

It was Alicia.

The walk to the shore was short and they only came across a single group of walkers. Half a dozen, and Elyza was certain she got three of them. On her own, she hadn’t really been paying attention to her shooting. Aim, fire, all that mattered was that the target went down.

Daniel goes to take up the oars of the dinghy but Chris darts ahead of him. Their trip back is slower, but at least Alicia doesn’t have to face his accusing stare. Daniel watches Elyza with the same look of distrust, but his eyes don’t cut as deep as Chris’. Alicia risked both their lives and the boat to go back for a complete stranger and, although they don’t agree and even she doesn’t understand why, she knows it was the right thing to do.

“You picked up a straggler,” Strand’s voice holds all the same offended swagger as his stride down the length of his boat. “And now you think you’re going to bring her on board.”

“Well... yeah,” Alicia replies.

“Nope, nope, and nope. I told you - this is my boat. Not your humanitarian home for waifs and strays. Either you leave her behind on shore, or you go back there with her. Doesn’t matter much to me.”

“She can shoot,” Daniel cuts in.

“So can you.”

“Two guns are better than one.”

The two men eye each other across the water, the boats bobbing together in silence. Finally Strand gives in; at a nod of his head Travis throws a rope to Daniel. Elyza does her best to stay out of the way as Daniel and Chris pull the dinghy in against the boat. The air of mistrust is almost as palpable as the salt air and she can feel it boring into her back as she climbs up the rope ladder after Alicia. Immediately she seems to be in the way once again and hightails off to the prow.

The lanky young guy relaxing on the white leather seats with a cocktail glass in his hand clashes painfully with the torn landscape that’s etched itself on Elyza’s brain.

“Well. I don’t remember you being on the shopping list,” he quips when he sees Elyza.

“What?”

“Nevermind,” he sighs, and rolls forward a little to offer her his hand. “I’m Nick.”

Elyza shakes the long fingers and gingerly sits down next to him. “Elyza.”

“So. Elyza. How does a girl like you end up stuck in a place like this with a loser like me?”

For a moment she stares at him, dumbfounded. Then she sees his mouth turn up in a grin heavily laced with mischief. Far from hitting on her; he’s making a joke and she can’t help but laugh. The sound comes out rough and spluttered at first but soon she’s barking with the sheer ridiculousness of it all.

Further down the boat Alicia has followed Chris, desperately trying to get him to stop, to talk to her, but nothing works until she grabs his arm and physically turns him to face her.

“What? What do you want me to say? This is not okay, Alicia. We know nothing about her. She could be anyone. She could be a murderer. And you just risked us all to bring her here. It’s not okay.”

Before Alicia can form an answer Chris disappears belowdecks. When she turns Strand is right behind her, leaning against the white siding.

“He’s right, and you know it.” 

“She’s not a murderer,” Alicia insists.

“Maybe. Maybe not. The point is we don’t know, and I don’t like not knowing things. So until we do, she’s bunking with you. If you’re wrong, you’ll be the first to know.”

Strand whistles as he walks away, a sound that goes right up Alicia’s spine and tickles her frustration until she kicks the wall in front of her. Fuck him, fuck Chris, fuck all of them. They never listen to her, not even Chris, not even when they’re meant to be sticking together.

She feels even more out of the loop when she arrives at the prow to find Nick and Elyza are splitting themselves laughing, slapping the cushions and wiping away tears.

“And then… and then… hahaha...it turns out his biscuits had been under his paper the whole time..."

Alicia just stands there until the noise dies down and Nick notices her.

“Oh hey, sis.”

“Hey,” Alicia spares him the briefest of glances and her fingers try to close around the comfort of an earphone cord that’s no longer there, settling on her zipper before she looks at Elyza. “Um, I’ve come to take you to your room.”

“I get a - ah, okay, sure.” She jumps to her feet. “See you later, Nick.”

“Laters.”

 

As Elyza sinks down onto the bunk, Alicia really takes her in for the first time. The dirt-encrusted nails, the half-dreaded greasy hair, the haunted, mistrustful dart in Elyza eyes, all make something in the back of Alicia’s brain rumble incoherently. It’s something hovering over her shoulder. She feels like she should know what it is, how to pin it down and bring it into the light, but she can’t.

“You – we haven’t met, have we?”

“I think I’d remember something like that.”

It sounds like such a corny set of lines, and Alicia almost says so; but there’s something genuine in the way Elyza looks at her. It’s frank in an almost terrifying way. Alicia has to change the subject.

Everything she thinks to ask, to say, seems pointless. Several times her mouth almost opens with a question, but she already knows the answer to each; does it matter any more? In the end, she settles for something more immediate and mundane.

“You - uh - you want a shower?”

Elyza looks up with an incredulous shine to her eyes.

“You have hot water here?”

“Yeah. Uh, more like warm water, but at least it comes out the shower.” Alicia waves her hand at the bathroom door. “In there.”

Elyza removes all her clothes quickly, but as nonchalantly as if she was simply taking off a scarf. She stands there naked, unashamed, actually eager to feel the air on every inch of her bare skin.

Alicia stares.

Stunned, her appraisal is far from subtle. Fortunately, Elyza is focused on the sweet anticipation of a shower, and doesn’t look her way. The few moments that she spends stretching out allow Alicia to take in the soft lines of her torso, curving down into the harder muscles of her legs. Her dirty hair obscures most of her back but frames the tattoo that takes up half her right arm, down to the elbow. Up her bicep old trees reach towards the clouded moon that rises at her shoulder. Wisps of fog weave in between the trunks and across the round surface of the moon. It looks like something out of a fairy-tale, Alicia thinks, one she knew as a kid but lost when she grew up.

//

With her hair washed and combed, clothed in some of her mom’s spare clothes, the earlier sense of familiarity that had hung around Elyza has vanished.

In fact they manage to get through the rest of the day and two extremely awkward group meals without any more strange sensations.

With Elyza settled on a mattress on the floor, Alicia pulls the covers up around her ears and decides it’s time for a peaceful rest

The dreams are even worse that night.

This time instead of a linear flow she’s haunted by a jumble of terrifying images, each worse than the one before.

Once powerful warriors mutilated and wasted by rage.

A trail of blood trickling down the chin of a bearded man.

Seven dead children, lying at her feet.

A beautiful woman’s head, placed in the middle of a bed.

In the early hours of the morning Alicia sneaks out of the room and onto the roof, where she finds Chris. They sit in silence, almost but not quite touching, waiting for the gray of day.

//

In the warmth of noon, Elyza tucks herself in against the radio mast and begins to sketch. She starts with basic lines. The sweep of the mountains to the north. The rise of fins in the water. Vague suggestions of life and shape

She thought she’d been drawing Alicia and Chris, slouching over the rails to watch for dolphins and competing to see how far over the waves they can flick pieces of stale cracker. Instead the completed drawing is another woman, asleep. Mesmerised, Elyza traces the lines she can’t remember drawing. There’s something painfully sad in the apparent peace in her face. Elyza knows she knows who she is, why that moment was so important to her, but she simply can’t put the thought together. She wants to reach through the paper and touch her, waken her, ask her for the words she cannot find.

She doesn’t even notice Alicia sit down next to her.

“Who is she?”

“I...I don’t know,” Elyza lies.

“She’s beautiful.”

An uncomfortable silence descends between them. Alicia stares off across the waves for a while.

Finally, she asks, “Would you draw me sometime?”

“Maybe. If you’re nice to me. Of course, it’d have to be in black and white,” Elyza lifts up the stub of her pencil as explanation.

“So you somehow manage to find so many weapons you clank when you walk, but a coloured pencil is just too hard?”

“The guns seemed a little more useful. You ever tried to defend yourself with a pencil?”

“Yeah, actually. A kid in my third grade class kept trying to steal my things of my desk, and the teacher wouldn’t do anything. So I stabbed him with my pencil.”

Elyza practically chokes.

“You stabbed him?!”

“Not stabbed stabbed; I barely even broke the skin. More of a jab, but he left me alone after that.”

As she watches Elyza recover, Alicia can’t help but smile. Anyone that put out by a joke about pencil stabbing couldn’t possibly be a murderer. Right?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Drawing reference for Elyza's tattoos can be found @overly-caffeinated-ranger-potato  
> http://overly-caffeinated-ranger-potato.tumblr.com/post/144030333174/elyza-lex-and-my-compelling-excuse-to-rip-off-the  
> http://overly-caffeinated-ranger-potato.tumblr.com/post/143738231839/elyza-abs-and-tatts-everything-you-need-to


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